Google Defends Local Search Strategy from Rivals' Gripes

Google claimed it's Google Places, Place Search and Place Pages are designed to deliver the best information to users, but TripAdvisor, Yelp, Citysearch and WebMd feel slighted.

Google Dec. 13 defended itself from suggestions that it
gives its own Place Pages local search service preferential treatment on Google.com,
arguing that anything it does is to help users find the best information
possible.
The issue arose after the Wall Street
Journal published this story (paywall
warning) Dec. 12 sourcing startup executives who fear Google is hijacking their
market by touting links to its own results over their own.

TripAdvisor.com, health site WebMD.com and local business Websites
Yelp.com and Citysearch.com have complained that Google surfaces
links to services such as as Google Places or Google Health above links
to their own services.

For example, Google has boosted the profile of its Google Places
local search directory to help users find local businesses. Places
makes it easier for local businesses to surface via searches on
Google.com and Google Maps; people click on pins that highlight Places
results to see photos, phone numbers and more info about those
businesses.
Google began putting those Places pins more prominently in search
results with its Place Search service, which
groups information from Place Pages when users do a search for a
local restaurant, landmark or business, in October. This effectively
pushed startups' results further down on Google, making them harder for
users to see and click on.
TripAdvisor CEO Stephen Kaufer told the Journal the traffic his site
gets from Google's search engine dropped by more than 10 percent as Google
prepared to
launch Place Search. In protest, TripAdvisor briefly blocked its content from Google Place Search after it felt it results were squeezed.
Carter Maslan, director of product management for Google's
local services, defended its Place Pages and Place Search as services that help users
compare places and find great sites with local information.
"When people come to Google looking for information
about places like restaurants, shoe stores, parks or museums, our goal is to
provide them with answers as quickly as possible and presented in a way that's
easy to read and understand," Maslan wrote in a
Dec. 13 blog post.
Sometimes that information is from TripAdvisor or Yelp, sometimes
it's from Google Places. Regardless, Maslan said, "we simply organize
those results around places to make it much faster to find what you're looking
for."
Google won't deny that it's drastically trying to boost
it local search capabilities, recently
failing to acquire local deals power Groupon.
The company wants to grab more ad revenue from local businesses; Google
launched a small business version of AdWords, called Boost, earlier
this year.
Yet Google's ultimate position is that it created all of these local
search services to benefit users, not the Websites whose content it
indexes in the course of providing users' information about businesses
and
locations.
Even so, a steady drum beat is beginning to build around
the issue. The complaints from local search Websites in the U.S. echo
those made by product search sites Foundem, Ciao and eJustice in Europe.
Their pleas have piqued the interest of the European Commission,
which is investigating Google for finagling search results to put its own Google
Product Search results above those of the smaller providers.
Google is hearing similar complaints from FairSearch.org
members, who oppose Google's proposed bid to buy travel software maker ITA Software because
they believe the search engine will take over their market.
Microsoft, which funds the ICOMP organization dedicated
to persecuting Google for its expansion on the Web, joined FairSearch.org
today.
The burden all of these companies face is proving that Google
is not only touting its own services above their others, but that in doing so
it is harming the consumers by reducing choice and healthy competition.